The Dale Jr. Download - 531 - Kyle & Richard Petty: 75 Years Of Racing Coming Full Circle

Episode Date: April 10, 2024

Dale Earnhardt Jr. sits down with NASCAR royalty as Richard and Kyle Petty join this week’s episode of the Download. As part of the Petty Family’s 75 Years in Racing anniversary celebration, the guys wanted to stop by the studio and share some chapters of their legacy in the sport. The conversation starts with family patriarch Lee, who was entered in the very first NASCAR Cup race held on June 19th, 1949. The family operation steadily grew through the 1950s, with Lee amassing scores of victories along with three championships and Richard joining the driving ranks in 1958. All of this came to a screeching halt though as a result of Lee’s harrowing crash at Daytona in 1961, which left Petty Enterprises with virtually nothing.The chat also covers what era of stock cars Richard and Kyle liked driving the most, and what it was like having Earnhardt family patriarch Ralph race for the team in 1957. The guys bring up one of Richard’s early run-ins with Dale Earnhardt Sr. at Martinsville in 1980, where the King had to give a young Intimidator a stern talking to. Listeners get some insight into what they can find at the Petty Museum and how the family held on to decades worth of “junk” because of the historic and sentimental value tied to it. They also discuss Kyle’s upbringing as a child, him working at the shop and his entry into racing. He explains that his relationship with Richard has come full-circle from the time he was young, and now they are closer than ever.  21+ and present in NC. First online real money wager only. $10 Deposit req. Bonus issued as non-withdrawable bonus bets that expire 7 days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See full terms at fanduel.com/sportsbook. Gambling problem? Call 877-718-5543 or visit morethanagame.nc.gov. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, everybody. It's Dale Jr. back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. download here this Wednesday, the ally guest segment. And coming into the show today is Kyle Petty and Richard Petty. Kyle Petty called me and said, hey, I want to bring my dad on the show. They're celebrating the Petty Family 75th anniversary in NASCAR. So this is going to be great to be able to talk to both of them. I'm excited about it. They're out in the lobby right now. Let's bring them in the studio and get going.

The following is a production of Dirty Mo. media. Everybody, Dale Jr., Dale Jr., back again. Hey, everybody's Dale Jr. Back, back, back, back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. Download. Both of the television studio.

Hey, everybody, Joe Jr., and Richard Petty. There's a period of my life that I was Richard Petty's son. And then there was a period of my life that I worked for Richard Petty. And then there was a period that I was teammates with Richard Petty. And then there was a period that I went and drove somewhere else and I was a competitor. When all that changed and went away, then I became his son again. All right, so I said we're back in the Bojangles Studio. Another episode of Dale Jr. download.

And now through May 5th, you can get your hands on two free bird dogs by using promo code Dale Jr. When you place an order on Bojangles.com or in the app at participating stores. That's the code D-A-L-L-J-R for two free bird dogs with your online or Bojangles app order. get them while they're hot. Bird dogs. Anyhow, as I said, Kyle Petty, Richard Petty, standing out in the lobby.

You don't want to keep the king waiting. But we got to make sure that we say thank you to Ally. Ally does it right. They do so much for this industry, for NASCAR, for DoDMRO Media. They have involvement in a lot of different spaces that help this industry in a lot of great ways, and they want to help you.

If you're saving, you know, for race tickets, a new car, a new house, whatever. You want to do this with Ally. They're a great partner for us. They could be a great partner for you. And they bring us this guest segment every single week. I said just a moment ago that Kyle Petty called me. I am eager to see what this is all about, right?

They're celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Petty family in NASCAR. And Kyle is taking the lead on this whole project. You know, he's taking it. his dad to different places in different areas to talk about this. And he wanted to come on the show. And so, you know, I've talked to Kyle separately and Richard as well on this show before. Never had them in here together. But I've got a pretty good idea of what I'd like to ask them.

But we'll see what Kyle has up his sleeve. So let's get started. Bring him in the field june download. Get him at the tent. Doesn't matter. He don't have a phone. He don't have a phone. He don't have a phone.

The king, Rich Pettie, does not have a cell phone. Nope. How do people? When's the last time you had a cell phone? Okay. The last time they gave me a phone, probably five or six years ago, maybe longer. And so the first thing I did was call one of my daughters.

Didn't answer. Calls another thing. Is that true? Called another and didn't answer. Because they didn't recognize the number. said the thing after one. Yeah, no name. If I couldn't get jealous.

You got to call somebody to go finding. I'm so jealous. I know. Think about it. Think about it. Think about it. Think about just checking out. Best way to live.

Yeah. They got one now they put in my truck so that they know where I'm at. For tracking. It's a tracking device. Oh, shit. Yeah, you just put it on the tracker so Jody knows where he's at if he's on this. They got those air tags. That's what you need.

Yeah. I got, I bought a fifth wheel and threw an air tag in there so I could watch it drive across country but yeah it's kind of nice they got them for you put them on your dogs and your kids yeah and people put them on suitcases yes yes right if you're flying overseas or something designed for i think you're right we started i don't know if y'all know that i might be air tagged you're good i might be air tagged i didn't know that you need you might be air tagged don't even know it don't even go that's not good that's not good all right so i got richard and kyle petty here for the Elginer Download, and Richard,

awesome, always, always awesome to see you, man. You change your room every time you walk into it. You and my dad, and there's a couple of people I've met my life that do that. And everybody, you're so recognizable and such an icon, but your son, I know, your son, I know, that says that's right here. Yeah, right there. Right there. Long time. That's just what it says.

I look at that number, man, and it gives me some hope. and confidence that maybe I'll live, I'll get to see as much of the world as you have and as much of the history. It'll be good. Yeah, so, Kyle, you reached out to me and said, I want to bring my dad on the show. You got a hat on that says petty, 75.

What's the deal? So this is our 75th. You know, for our family, my granddad started, and it's funny, we just left Martinsville. and with Clay and, you know, Clay Earl was there, and then Clay Campbell. So my granddad came to the first race over here in Charlotte. The legend of rolling the car over and not having a ride home and having a bummer ride home, him and Uncle Morris and Grandma and Granddaddy, and that's kind of where it started.

And, you know, we were just at Martinsville this last weekend, and he's still there. And it's cool, it's really cool, because you look at my granddaddy. granddad raced through the 50s and then had his accident in 61 and then my dad and then I come along in the late 70s and Adam came along in the late 90s. So it's like, it's always been one of us here in some way, shape, or form and still dragging to the racetrack now. So that, it's just a celebration of my Uncle Maurice, my grandmother, who made the wind of nets and all the stuff for the cars. I mean, there's so many pieces. And you know how it is because you come from a family of racers. Everybody contributes. Your grandmother contributes. You're

Your granddad, everybody contributes it, and that's the way it is, because that's the way racing was back then. Yeah. So, y'all are celebrating Richard, but also Lee's story. Yeah. It's not just a Richard Petty story. You know I was at the very first race. It's the petty. I've been going to races for that long, but the big deal was, you know, my dad started,

and for the first eight or ten years, he was the company, and then I came along and got things all missed up. Then we finally, he had that bad accident in 61, so then it kind of fell on me and my brother to run an operation. And, you know, it worked out pretty good. Really, my dad took up golfing. You know, he'd come in aggravated us every once in a while. But it was up to us, and it was still a family deal. You know, mother kept the books. She made all the reservations where we was going.

So again, it wasn't just the Richard Petty story or Kyle Petty or Lee Petty. Took the whole tribe to make it work. Yeah, but I'm going to chime in. Listen, when we get too far off track here, you just say, get back, get back, come here, come here. There's a wall out here. You need to come out.

So here's the part. You know, Grand Day started in 49, and you were, what, 13, 12, 11, 12 years old, and Uncle Morris was 9 or 10. So he started and they raised. But then when when Granady went over the wall at Daytona in 61, how long did he stay down there? How long was he in the hospital? Four months.

Four months. Four months. Yeah. He was in the hospital for four months. What were why, what were the things that he was dealing with that took that long? Had a rod in his leg. What a, and broke his term whatever up here, tore knee cap up, a puncture the line, broke a bunch of ribs. Yeah. And we went over there, I think Monday after the accident.

And him and mother, in fact, him and mother stayed at the Daytona. They didn't, she didn't even come home. And walked in and said, okay, I talked to getting. He was kind of out of that. He said, okay, y'all go on home, go to Greensboro and get a car. And back then it was pretty stocked cars. So, you know, go home, go to Greensburg, and get a new car. Because we had two cars.

I crashed one in one of the races, and then he crashed the other one, and we didn't have that. That was it. So I had to go home and get another car. And he said, y'all go ahead and get a car, and we'll be home probably Friday. You know, four months from Friday, he finally comes on. But up to that time, my dad ran the whole racing part of it. And mother took care of the book. And my brother and myself just worked on the car.

So we were home. We had no idea. where we was financially or anything. So we recovered. That's the crazy part. And that's where I was going with. That's the crazy part. The crazy part was they went to Daytona in 61 with two cars and two drivers

and basically came home with one driver, meaning him and my uncle Maurice, and Grandma and Grinde stayed down there. And they were out of business. They didn't have any cars. Nothing sitting at the shop, nothing. And we had a couple of people work for us. They just quit. Yeah.

Because they thought, they knew, yeah, they were going to be out of business. Right. They just assumed, right? Yeah, so from 59 to the beginning of 61, it was a thriving business. And then in one, one day, and basically one day, because it was a qualifying race. That's when these accidents have it. It's a qualifying races. And they were out of business. Tell him the story of, I'm going to take it over here.

Tell him the story about you going out the racetrack and then Granddaddy coming to see you in the hospital. and picking the glass out of yons. That's what happened. Something happened anyhow. We went in the first corner. This is the first race. Because I was going to ask you, there was somebody else that went out of the track that day. Yeah, first qualifying race.

Nobody ever talks about it. Nobody talks about it because the only two people have ever been out of the track. But anyway, went down in the first corner and a bumper, somebody crashed and a bumper went through the windshield and I didn't have any goggles or nothing on and it went over the deal and went down to the fence outside and turn one when I got out I got out through the windshield yeah okay and then when I did then I went back to the infirmary in the infield and it was picking glass out of my eyes and they said somebody just went through three and four and so I jump up and run up there to see what's going on.

And, man, I said, that's it. You know what I mean? Yeah. So let me ask you. So when, so the, did you see the bumper coming at you? Yeah. And it goes through the windshield? It went right through the wind.

And the only thing it kept it from hitting me at that time we had the attack set up. On the dash. On the dash. You mean? Yeah. And that, that hit it somehow and kept it from coming right through. Diverting it. Damn.

And so, so the windshield's knocked out to be. the damn bumpers in the car. Yeah. And did you, are you slowing it down? No, no. You went straight into the fence. I was just holding on because you threw down that big bank. Right.

It must be. Did the cars have side glasses in them? Yeah, yeah, at that time I had all the glass. Yeah, so you had sideglass. So as soon as the front opened up, the interior just filled up with air. Yeah. You know what I mean? So it just like, it was like a parachute.

So it just did this to the car. Holy cow. He never turned over. It just went up on top of the fence through a little wheel and then went down to the bottom of the hill. Yeah. And so you hop out and go to the infield care center. Yeah.

And a picking glass out of your eye. Did they get it all? Got most of that. That's how comfortable. That's why you wear sunglasses now. I think it finally worked itself all out. Yeah. But did you recognize immediately that your dad was in trouble over there?

Yeah, we knew right quick what was going on. Was there some sort of? We didn't really know how bad it was. And I run over there and run up the bank. and looked over there. There's just two cars, and you couldn't even tell front from rear or whatever. And so quick as did, we jumped in the, come back and got in the car and went to the hospital. And where they took him out of the ambulance and took him in emergency room, the little blood.

You could tell right where he went. This is not good. Yeah. Anyhow, the good Lord didn't see him to take him that day, so he was still there. That car is here. in Moresville. The one? Yeah.

That car that he went out of the racetrack in. I've always wondered, so I've seen pictures of behind y'all shop. Yeah. There's, you know, body parts and that car and a couple other, you know, convertible or something sitting in the woods, right? Yeah. Eventually, you know, that, you know, somebody came and got that car and then y'all got rid of the rest of stuff cleaned up the yard, right? Some of it got buried. Some of it gets buried.

Yeah, some of it gets buried. So what I wonder, like when I walk over there to that museum in Mooresville and I see that car, my reaction is, holy cow, that's Lee Paddy's car that went out of the race. That's the car I've seen pictures of so many. Like I've seen pictures of that car sitting down there on the fence so many times in my life. It's a very iconic moment when you would watch any kind of publication in the 90s about NASCAR. that clip of that car going over the wall was used so many times to promote the sport, right, in the history of the sport. When I look at it, I have a reaction of awe and amazement, right?

When you look at it, how do y'all feel? Because I wonder why that car isn't in your hands. You know, I guess I look at it as the end of one era and the start of another era. Is it a, is it a, when you see the car, is your reaction sad, upsetting or is it a drum up bad memory or is it like no nothing I don't know yeah and maybe we're maybe we're both weird that way and and and and I and I because I say it this way there's always the next race yeah so that race was behind you you mean so you just didn't look back yeah you just you just there's the next

race you know and and that's like he said that was the end of that was the end of that era. That was the end of the Lee Petty era and then it became Richard Petty. Is there a tiny little party view that wishes you could have that car or no? What would you do with it? What would you do that? I don't know. I keep a lot of shit. I don't need. Hold on. So we've got it obviously up there and especially this year in 75th. My sister runs our museum. The Petty Museum. Well, yeah, there you go. You got a museum. Yeah. So the museum. But we, when we walk through the museum, when he says it and I walk through the museum, we refer to it as junk.

Yeah. Yeah, that's that little junk over there that we had back in the storage building. That's that junk over there that you had. You know what I mean? You just don't, you don't, because, because it's served its purpose and now you've moved on to something else, you know? It just served.

And, you know, it's like, it's like cars. And you know, you've got a whole shop of them. But you really don't have cars. You just got a lot of pieces that come together for a weekend as a car. And then they go, back into pieces, you know what I mean? So do you have an affinity to those pieces? You know what I mean? And not that rear-end housing, not that funny. Yeah, that paint scheme or that, you know,

where do you draw the line? Yeah, that's right. There is a line some words. So I don't think we ever we ever looked at it. Even when Adam's accident happened, I never looked at it, you know, with that, with his car. We have that car. But it's just like, man, you, you, you look to, and I look around your place here. And you, the photos of the shops or cars and stuff, you look to the cars, that brought joy. You look at the winning cars, you know, you look at them and you say, yeah, man. I know that one got me where I wanted to be. I just, I thought, I know, I agree with you there.

And I'd always wondered, I never even thought about it until you were coming today. And I was like, man, I've seen that car. I've seen Lee's car. And I've looked at it in amazement because of what, what, because of how many times I'd seen that clip. And then I thought, man, I wonder if they feel completely the opposite about it. And it's like, it's like a not, it's not a great memory. It does. It was just a happening.

It was supposed to be. And, you know, you just learn to live with whatever the circumstances you learn to live with. So you just kind of letting it go in the past. You said Lee got into golf. How hard was it for him to reckon with, you know, the change in his life, right? Well, the big deal there, he tried to run two or three races. And I think really the last race he run was at Martinsville. and when the race was over he got out and said this ain't the pun no more yeah so he got to make that

it yeah yeah yeah that's good at least he got to make yeah yeah why did he take up golf because he'd never play golf before well when he was growing up he was a caddy at a golf course really back in the depression or sometime for the depression yeah and he always liked golf but he never had any time for it sure and then once he had his accident he needed to exercise and to go through therapy and all that stuff. So he took up golfing. And from the last day, he lived, he's out in the front yard, knocking golf balls back and forth, you know.

Grandma said he'd go, she called it the glory hole. He'd go up to Sumner, play golf. And on rainy days, they play poker. Yeah. But he went to a golf course every day. Yeah, sounds like fun. Yeah. Good life.

Yes. So, Richard, in all of the cars, all the gen generations of cars, tell me the car, tell me the era where you really enjoyed the car, really enjoyed, felt like the car and you fit. You know, probably early mid-70s. Really? Driving the charger? We won a bunch of races with the charger, and we had a lot of experience with it, and we

got to run it like four or five years. Yeah. You know what I mean? And it was, of all the race cars I've ever had, it was the most natural race car. That was before all the wind tunnel tests in and all this kind of stuff. But that car was so sensitive, you could change the spoiler, a quarter inch, go from dead push to dead lease. You know what I mean?

But we had worked with it so much, we learned that. And so it was just a pleasure to drive. It worked on short tracks and road courses, super speedways. It was just a good, good all-around best race car I've ever had. And I'll ask you the same question, Kyle. You run a lot of different generations from back from 80 to... It's not running those big cars, dude. You ran them all. You did.

All right. I started at Daytona with Lee Springs and torsion bars. So you don't want, honestly, I think the early 80s when we went to the Buick's and then to the Pontiacs, those and then to the football-shaped Ford. You know, the Ford and got to drive for the Woodbrother. through that part. That was a fun time because Arrow was a part of it, but it was not the dominant part. Yeah. You know, until we started, until we started taking the front bumper all the way to the ground, you know, that's when the Arrow horse left the barn and you were never going to get the arrow horse back in the barn. You know what I mean? Before that, from a driver's standpoint, from a Richard

Petty and from your dad and from, you know, Darrell and guys like that, you felt like everything you ever learned on a short track, you could take straight to Charlotte and Dayton and everything. all about springs, it was all about shocks, it was all about hooking up coming them off, it was mechanical. And you felt like, tell me a driver that didn't think he was smarter than everybody else mechanically. You know what I mean? But the arrow thing hadn't raised his head. So for me, I think that was a period when you felt like a driver could make a difference and a big difference. Yeah, I think the Arrow deal took a lot away from ingenuity from each team. I think it took away from the driver because before if the car pushed or loose or whatever, that just happened to be

part of the car and there's nothing you could do about it. So then it was up to the driver to learn to get the very best out of what he had to work with. And now the cars are so, I mean, a quarter pound of a year changes the whole race car. I mean, you know, how can a driver keep up with that? I don't know. I think we were, and to that point, I think we were over at Charlotte when I was driving for the Wood Brothers and with Leonard. And I was a little free getting in the corner.

And I said, maybe it needs a little bit more front spring, just something to hold me up getting in the corner, a little bit more right front spring. He's, no, I'll fix it. He just changed the front inset and it fixed everything. You know what I mean? Because he felt like he had enough tools in his toolkit that it wasn't just a spring change.

Yeah. It wasn't just a quarter pound of air. I'll just change your front inset and make it work for you. And it did. Yeah. So one of the things that you may, mentioned briefly that I wanted to talk about as I've learned and tried to learn more and more about my family and my dad and Ralph and collecting photographs and things like that I learned about

Ralph's brief history driving for the Petty's yeah um y'all had a couple cars um Lee had a couple cars that would run from time to time um different drivers yeah we ran convertibles in hard top right And I think he did, drove a couple of convertible races. I think he must probably drove a hardtop racer, too. Yes. But we kept breaking axles. Every time he'd get going to get, he'd broken axles. I think he ran three or four different races for us.

But that was 58, I guess. Right. 1950s. There's a picture of Ralph with you and Maurice and Lee on y'all's property. y'all were hanging around on a porch or around a porch or something at the house probably the back porch there on the side porch coming out of the kitchen yeah yeah and i found i've thought i've always seen ralph in he he was always very territorial right his car his shop you know his he sat on his trailer his truck and it was really interesting for me to see

ralph in another environment you know be holding to another yeah oh yeah right the petty the petty the Petty family. So what was it, what do you remember, I guess, of Ralph? Yeah. How was the mannerisms? Me and Dale worked with him. Right. I mean, and he was easy to work with. You know, he knew what he wanted in the car. Okay, we didn't, and, you know, these teenage kids, we didn't have a clue what was going on, you know, and, but when we worked with him and stuff, we let him kind of tell us what to do, because we wasn't smart enough tell him what to do. And it just, again, it just didn't work out.

Because we weren't looking for a driver all the time, just from time to time, we found out that so-and-so wasn't going to be at a race and we had a good chance to run good, so we called up Ralph. And, you know, a lot of Sunday races and stuff, that Ralph had run Friday night and Saturday night, didn't have no place to run on Sunday, so he'd come and drive for us. Yeah. Later, you know, later on you would end up racing against my dad as he's coming into the

Cup series. One of my, one of the things that I've never got to talk to you about was Martinsville. Dad's a rookie. This is a, this race just got uploaded on the NASCAR website. And so, dad starts right behind you or a couple rows, two rows behind you on the inside and dives down onto the inside, three wide, going into turn one, hits you and three or four of the cars, big crash. He goes down.

We go down, I'm on the inside, I think somebody's on the outside of him. We go down and turn into the corner, and all of a sudden there's a car on my hood. Yeah. Because what happened when the race started, he just turned left, went up across the grass, and jumped the curb and jumped right in the middle of that whole crowd. That was my introduction to Dale Earnhardt. Yes. I know that I had heard that at the end of the day, you went over to him and stuck your finger in his chest and told him.

Okay. Right? And that was a good lesson for him. I imagine what it must have felt like to have Richard Petty hunting you down after the race to make sure he got his point across. I tell you, I don't know if he learned anything from him. He learned some of it anyway. He knew not to knock everybody out. after that he just take one at the time

knock him out. Yeah, so Darrell always tells the story about the finger. You know what I mean? But honestly, but that's the way you grew up. That's the way we all grew up. If you got, when the race is over, we go find a guy. Yeah. Don't tweet him.

Right. Don't texting. I know. Don't call him. Just go find a guy. Talk about it. And I'm going to scream at you and you're going to scream at me, but then it's over with. Then everybody went home and forgot about that.

Yeah. Right. It's just cool to think about Richard. You know, being, you know, Richard at that time was, you know, he was the king. Oh, yeah. Right. You know, as competitive as ever on the racetrack, went in races and championships still, and stick, you know, having to, you know, never, never something you want to do,

but having to tell one of the rookies how it gets done. And I just love, so I did, I did a big project on 1979. Yeah. And learned. I really enjoyed it. I learned all these little things, right? These little stories. And so I love the idea, we always think about dad similar to you, right?

This huge figure. And I love thinking about dad being this rough, raw kid that had to get, you know, straightened out and needed, you know, needed guys like you and Donnie Allison and all these other drivers to... He had to learn, yes. Learn, yeah, teaching. But think, so think about that, though. And that's a fascinating part for me because it's a different thing. So I grew up, I grew up in the 60s going and during the summers and hanging out and doing that stuff.

So there was always him, Bobby and Donnie, Kale, Pearson, Glott's Back, Leroy, Baker, you know, all those guys. And then so then your dad shows up and he's got to race against those guys. And they're still in their prime. You know what I mean? I mean, he's coming in. So you're starting with those guys in their prime. And you've got to go head to head with them. And that's still, that's that area that's like that golden era when you look at it.

And that's the cool part about coming in when your dad came in and when Ricky came in and with a lot of those guys. They got to experience both. They got to experience that era and got to experience the coming of Jeff and you and that next era. You know what I mean? Which is a great, they're that bridge. They're the bridge that connects the past to what we are today. I always look at NASCAR being different segments. To begin with, you had to leap 80, fireball, Robbins, Junior Johnson crowd.

Then Pearson and Allison and all that crowd came through. Then Darrell came through. Your dad came through. Took that era to another stage. Jeff comes in, takes it to another stage. Jimmy comes in and takes it another stage. And right now we're looking for the next. guy to take us to the next stage.

Right now, we don't have basically a leader. You know what I mean? We're the fox is out there. We don't have a fox for everybody to run at because everything is so even now. You might run really, really good one race and you're lucky to make the race

the next deal next week. And so there's no dominant figure in cup racing right now. It's just a toss-up. So think about that. So he had to put up with Buck Baker and Lee Petty and the flocks and those guys coming pointing at him saying,

you don't do that to me. Right. You know what I mean? That's where he got the finger from. He got it from that. I'll tell you this. And I know your dad's told you little things about if you do this. So he told me one time we're at Daytona and he said, or we were talking about some stuff. And he didn't give me much advice about racing. That's pretty obvious. But so he said, you know, when you're when you come to the line and end of the race if you just lean on somebody a little bit, sometimes it'll make them just check up a little bit. Now everybody runs over everybody all the time. So we're running a qualifying race down there.

And I get into AJ's door coming to the line to Foyt's door. And I'm tickled crappless, man. I run like fifth. He runs sixth or fourth or third, whatever. I'm tickled crappless. I'm just about to get out of the car. My wind of that flams down. And it's AJ. And he's standing there and he said, what was that all about? And he's, you know, he's screaming and like AJ Cannon. And I got my helmet on and I'm fading back to the other side. And I said, I said, my dad always said when you're coming to the line, if you get into somebody, it might make them check up a little bit. And he said, so you got that from your dad? And I said, yeah, he said, okay. And he turned around, walked off. It was like, then it was cool.

You know what I mean? Then it was okay. You know what I mean? To be 20 years old and running the AJ Ford, it was okay. It wasn't okay to begin with. Yeah, it wasn't okay to begin with. That's so funny. You had a good excuse, right? NASCAR fans, Fandul, America's number one sportsbook is here, and right now new customers, they get $200 in bonus bets guaranteed when you bet your first five bucks. You just go to fanduil.com slash Dale to sign up, and then you can bet on everything, from individual race winners to prop bets to which driver is going to take home the championship

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It's that easy. And for the latest die cast content, don't forget to follow Lionel Racing on Facebook, X, Instagram, and TikTok. I want to go back since I got both of you here, talk about Kyle a little bit, before he even drove a race car. You know, what kind of son was Kyle? I mean, we see the pictures of him as, you know, playing football for the high school and the quarterback. And it seems like he had a very, you know, aside from being involved in racing, and that's a unique thing for us, as we know growing up in the sport,

it seemed he had a very, you know, traditional childhood, right? High school, all of the traditional experiences that anybody might have or expect. But, you know, what was he like as a son? I don't know. He's on one ahead. That's a good answer. Let's stop there. Let's stop there, ladies'women.

It was kind of a deal that he never got in any bad trouble. But it just mischief stuff. Yeah. You know what? With his sisters. Like what? with the people at school. What was the one thing that...

Cops brought me home one day. Wait? Cops brought me home one day. Yeah, that was one deal. We had a cousin that lived down the road maybe a half mile. Kyle had this little bike, motorcycle, because he always had a motorcycle since he was six, seven years old. But he'd ride down the power line, and he'd go across the road,

and a guy lived across the road. Well, one night he was coming back, and it was about dark, so he got out on the highway. Oh. And then so happened. I was eight or nine. So happened there was a couple of state men. I guess the neighbors had been complaining about it. Anyhow.

So I'm sitting in the house there, and somebody knocks on the door when I get up. There's two state patrol cars and a little motorcycle sitting outside the door. Yeah. and so you know I go out and I said okay what's happening and what happened Kyle had come out across the road and got on the asphalt road and when he seen the police he took a shortcut he went down and so happened the guy was sitting down there waiting on one of them was sitting down there they knew exactly what his route was so somebody had told on him you know

man all this for a nine-year-old kid yeah yeah they brought him home just said, okay, just don't get out of it. I didn't think bad. Don't get out of the road more than you have to. Why were the neighbors so hard up to get you, man? I don't know. I wasn't, I wasn't the only kid with a motorcycle. They were, listen, we used to play ball up at the ballpark, play Little League Baseball, and they'd be six or seven of us rode motorcycles to Little League ball practice. You know what I mean?

I mean, because all the farm kids, all the rural farm kids, everybody had a bike. So you grow up in this house. I've seen pictures of this house. Yeah. He had trophies everywhere. Yeah. They were everywhere. Everywhere.

Everywhere. Tell them about being in the ceiling. They were in the attic. One came through the attic one day. One came through the ceiling. Fell through. Yeah, because what, so you have, so the, you know, you pull the steps down, you go up, and there was just trophies everywhere.

And they'd be, on the rafters, they'd be a piece of plywood and the trophies set on, plywood and the trophy selling. Granddaddy had all those oak trees and stuff. Squirrels would get them. Squirrels would get in the attic, knocked the trophies over. So trophies fall over and come through the ceiling, come through the, you know, the, you know, Yeah, the plaster. Yeah, just stick through like that.

So they were trophies everywhere. I mean, I cannot, and I don't mean it to sound arrogant. I don't mean to sound anything. It's just that, it's just that they were just trophies everywhere. And I've told this story before. I mean, at that time, being six, seven, eight years old and Sharon and then Lisa, we were just cocky enough, I guess, or whatever, that you didn't go to a racetrack. that you didn't believe that coming home

there's going to be a trophy in the back seat. You know what I mean? You just knew you're going to Rockingham? Yeah, we'll bring a trophy back. Going to Donate? Yeah, we'll bring a trophy back. You know what I mean? Charlotte's about the only place

we never thought we was going to bring a trophy back from. You know what I mean? Because that was like a struggle. But it was just like you just had them. You know, and they go off for, they go to the northern tour and run Islup and Malta and Fonda and all up in there and bring back four or five trophies. Yeah.

And just throw them in an attic. That's where they go. That's where everything went. So where do you think most of that stuff is today? Most of us in the museum. That's one thing. Once the deal fell through the ceiling, my wife Linda made us move them down to the garage. And we had a front office there, and we just stuck them in.

No museum and just someplace. And they just stacked on top each other. And then eventually we opened up the front, started in the little museum. And it's grown. and now that we took the race cars out, the garages, two different garages, full of trophies and cars and junk. Yeah.

Junk everywhere. So where, what is the, where was this house? Right next door. Is it still there? Yeah, yeah. Who lives in? Mark Petty lives there.

No shit. Yeah, Uncle Marsh is the youngest. So it was Grandma's house. He lives in the house that Lee Petty grew up in or family. So the house that he was born in and grew up in sets right beside the race shop. It's the White House. Is it still it? Yeah, it's still there.

And the little brick house is right beside it. It was 1900 square feet. Yeah, that's where we live. That's for me and Sharon and Lisa grew up with him and mama. Yeah. And so all of that's still there. Still there. It's still there.

It's still there. It's still there. The buildings. Still there. Still there. I wish I could see with my own eyes. So the buildings are all still there. Yep.

Still there. And is what's in the back, the furtherest, furtherest, like, in my mind, I want to imagine that we could walk into one of the old building. You ain't been in this closet and forever. You ain't been in this part of the shop forever. You're going to open it up and there's going to be like all this old racing junk sitting around. We've got trailers sitting all around.

We've taken most of it out. And hemi heads, blocks. They had some super bird noses and some wings. Are you serious? Yes, some original superbird noses and wings. And then, you know, we built the kit cars. It had a bunch of kit cars stuff. Really?

Had a lot of kit cars stuff. All that stuff still. Still around somewhere in those cabinets and stuff, man. It is fascinating. It really is to go through it. Because I told you, it's just junk. You don't give anything away. 75 years of history.

Yeah. History is still there. Yeah. You know what? I mean, it's physical history still there. I mean, you'd start cleaning out stuff and you'd throw something. something out on the floor and they were like, yeah, that's a tow bar that we towed to Riverside with

and 57 or 58, you know what I mean, something like that. That's just what we pulled behind the old Christ or what. I mean, there were, and they, between him and Dale and when Uncle Mars was around, between those three, they knew what everything was. But Granddaddy and those guys, like Ralph, grew up in the depression, so you didn't throw anything away.

You just put it somewhere because you could use it later. You know, you're gonna use it for something later. It might be a broke rod. You weld that thing back together. You might need an extra rod. somewhere you know what i mean i mean you got to you got to keep that stuff up somewhere we still got the original floor and original shop that my dad worked out of in 1949 really yeah yeah it was started as a ripper shed and we closed it all in and you he worked in there until 1956 and we

built a little shop out back 57 we built another building 58 we built another building so there must be a thousand doors it's just it's just add on just just just kept adding on as you need it You know what? Yeah, but we still got old feed scales that we used to scale the cars on. Yeah. We've got a 50 Plymouth setting on the thing, dust everywhere, old tools laid in the floor.

And that is the history. That is where it all started. Yeah. The floor, him and Uncle Marsh poured the floor. Out of a wheelbarrow. Out of a wheelbarre. So it's like this. But that's okay because it was dirt before that.

But it beat the far out of that red dirt that was having the floor. I mean? So it was just an old farm shed. And then they poured the concrete in there. Those things, when you walk through there, and we were, we did a, we did some taping for a thing called shift for NASCAR.com. It's the eyes, the evolution of NASCAR through the eyes of my dad.

And you watched a couple of them. Thank you very much. So anyhow, so we, and I asked him, I said, how many races were won out of here? How many races did Granddaddy win? And we figured, what, 30-some, 40-some, were won out of that one, a room that's not any bigger than this. Right. That's not any bigger than this,

that they won 40-some, 30-40-some races out of that one little building, just dragging that car of the racetrack. So what kind of discipline did Richard display as a father? None. None. So, like, you never, Richard Petty never pulled a belt. None.

Never. No, here's the way it worked, and we've talked about this. You tell it. Yeah, you tell it. You tell it. Well, what happened was... I was the man. What happened was?

We had three kids at the time, and I'd go out and make the money, racing. And Linda, my wife took care of the house and all the bills and all that stuff. So when the kids acted up, she took care of it right in. Yeah. Because she didn't want to say, well, your daddy gets home. Sure. because when I came home, they wanted everything to be smooth. Kids love me, and I didn't get on to them.

You know what I mean? So she disciplined the kids. I didn't have to. Yeah, and you got to think back, it's a different time. Sure. Because the thing was, so he'd leave and might be gone for two weeks. Really? You know what I mean?

I mean, because they go race. It's not like it is now. You know what I mean? Were you, I know you were doing your own thing with sports and stuff, but were you like, damn, I want to go? Yeah, so when I was in the third grade, I started going during the summers with them. Man, remember I had a broke leg. Yeah.

Roding that truck from, we went to Michigan and around Michigan, and then went to Riverside, and then went to Riverside. Did we come back through Texas? I don't know if we came back to Texas. Third grade? Third grade. So when you're at the racetrack at that age, what would you, you know, they'd bet you in the garage and all that? Yeah.

Yeah, they'd try to throw you out. Gas away, try to throw you out. But you were in. You go to Riverside in places, they weren't as harsh. They wouldn't let me touch their car much. Jabe Thomas would let me wax his car every now and now and now. They'd let me pull the wagon every now and then do stuff. But you'd move tires around, but I was, you're just in the garage area, man.

You just there. You just there. Yeah, you're just there. You know, Davy would be there a lot of times. Davey came, David's, Davey started coming a little later. Ricky and Larry were there more, but Pearson wasn't running all the time. I mean, he wouldn't. But Ricky and Larry would come more because they were a little bit older.

Yeah. But then Davy started coming later. Was there any other kids around your age? Jake Elder's kid, Randy. Remember Randy? What about the Wood Brothers? They were around, but not as much because they ran a limited schedule. Yeah, that's right.

They were like with Pearson, so they would run a limited schedule when you were 19-up. With your dad and David running nose-to-tail in so many races, did you and them boys get along? Yeah, everybody got along. They were busy playing in the infield, even though the race was going on. So on race day, you couldn't get anywhere close. You know what I mean? during the week, you know, you could do a lot of stuff in the garage area and mess around. But, yeah, you know, it never transferred to, I mean, listen, Davy told me a million times how great

Bobby Allison was. And I was always about a foot taller and about 100 pounds heavier. So I'd just whip his butt and tell him how great Richard Pettie was. I mean, it was that kind of thing, you know what I mean? But you never, it never got to that. And I say this all the time. And I told Clay this, and we were talking about it, you know, the, you used to have the Azayas around Martinsville. So pretty, man.

Duck pond outside and all these days. And it looked like, man, it looked like you're going to the masters. You know what I mean? But they had that scoreboard down there in turn one. And, you know, that guy'd sit there at the end of it. And every 10 laps, he'd walk down to the end and flip the cars, on how many laps have been run. And, you know, every now and then, he'd get up and he'd change the numbers on, you know,

21 running first, 43, running the second, 12 with Allison, you know, driving for junior in them. So he'd change him. So as soon as the race was always, they hadn't no more thrown the freaking checkered flag. We had blasted across the racetrack and change every number to the 43. No shit. Every number. Every number on the scoreboard to 43.

And then you'd be messing around. You'd look up there and Davey was up there and he'd changed them all the 12. No shit. Then Eddie and then we'd get up there and they'd change them all the 21. So the whole deal was to be there the last one. And we were always there because he had set and signed autographs for a million. So we'd leave that place with 43. First five positions and lap slend.

Right there at the end. That was the way. But that was just stuff you did. You know what I mean? Because you just made your own fun. So at the end of the, and I feel like I remember this, even though it's literally on the very fringe of me

starting to come to the races. But when the race would end, you didn't leave. That was literal. Like you didn't leave until the last person got an autograph. Well, I think I got into the habit. When we first went, started going to the races. just moving Dale and maybe another guy. And, you know, we'd load and unload the car and all that stuff.

So as time progressed, more people want autographs. And I finally said, okay, if I sell here and sign autographs, them guys will have to have a truck all loaded up, and I won't have to do nothing. So while they was working, I'd be signing an autograph. And then when they'd get the thing all loaded up, they'd come and say, okay, we're ready to go. So that's when we'll leave.

Yeah, but the other thing is, too, is, like it's and it's it was more like short track racing okay when when they throw the check of flag they'd open the gate under the flag stand and race fans had just come down or into the yeah and and you didn't you know you didn't have a garage area at martinzville you didn't have a garage area so they just come to the car we must have lost a million shifter knobs then people spend those shifter knobs off a car and put them in their pot it must be me and rich Yeah, gas caps off the back, pull those things, because you had it, you know, with just the safety wire on it. They'd snatch those. Anything they could take, they'd take. They'd pull decals off the front, you know, champ decaps. Really? Yeah, they just, you just take stuff because that was, it was open game. Yeah. But he would, and you go to Wilkesboro, and you got to go back in time again, there were 15,000 people there. Yeah. You know what I mean? And that was a huge crowd. Yeah. That was a huge crowd for a cup race, you know, in the late 60s, early 70s. It's not what it is. So it was a different time.

So you didn't, I love these stories, but I'm going to always keep bringing us back to, you didn't, you didn't drive race cars as a teenager, right? Yeah. And so couldn't. Couldn't. Why? He wouldn't let you? Why wouldn't you let him?

They wouldn't let me, listen, they wouldn't let me sit in a car and back it out. Why? Why? Stay out of that race car. Why? Don't know. Did you not want him to become a race car driver? No, that was not the deal.

We didn't know what happened. We used to work on the race car. And when we get all set up and stuff, I jump in it and go down the road and drive over to the county line, make sure everything was working and all that. And we was afraid that if he got in one of them cars, he'd do the same thing. Okay. I mean, 15-year-old kid, hey, man, I'm going to go down like my dad.

I'm going to go over the county line. Yeah. So Dale wouldn't let him close to the car. Yeah, it wouldn't let me. Really? Yeah. I never, listen, I never drove a car. I never drove a car.

When we put that magnum together and drove it down to the gas pump at the end of the fence and took it down to the gas pump and put gas in it and brought it back, that's probably the first time I ever drove a car. The magum that you put together to go to Daytona with your own to Arque Race. That was your, you literally. I'd never been around. I'd never driven around a racetrack until I rolled. out of pit road. So why your dad wasn't, you know, wasn't a strict discipline discipline type of father,

they, they, and I get this vibe from, from him, being around him, all these years and, and Dale, too, when it came to that race shop and the job they were doing at the race shop and what was going on there, they were very strict. Yeah, oh yeah. Guidelines, right. Yeah, there was. Yeah, you had it, you had a box, like we were talking about it the other day. Like, when I first started, when I'd go over there when I was 12 and they'd put , stand me at the, at the sandblaster. And they just, I'd, you know, trailing, or we do springs, we do spindles, you know, tape off the spindle part of it, you know, and sandblasted. And then by the time I was 13, I got where I could magniflux. They trusted me to magniflux, which was a huge

day for me. You know what I mean? Run that thing through that, put to make sure there's no cracks. Man, you'd find a crack. It's like, yeah, man, I saved them, man. I got, I've done something. You know what I mean? And then they'd let me paint them. You know, you'd paint the parts and pieces and take them back. Dale would do the front ends, way to do the rear ends. And you'd just take the parts. And then Richie and them taught me to weld by the time I was 12 or so, working on kit cars and stuff. So they taught me to weld and they let me weld stuff. And you just worked in the engine room for a little while for about a year. So worked in the body shop for about a year. Just worked in each apartment. Next thing you know, you're 16, 17 years old.

The kit cars, this was a... This was a... kind of an initiative by Chrysler to get into short track racing. My dad tested with Pete Hamilton, I believe, over at Concord, with one of the prototypes. Yeah, yeah. Which was kind of a big deal. There's a spread in a couple of stock car magazines and so forth around that. You can see Dad, and I've got some pictures of that day. And that was 74-ish, I think.

Yeah, 3-4, right along there, 5. Early 70s. Right, yeah. Dad had just started racing. himself. It was crazy, man. You get a, and they interrupt you here, sorry. But you got, you got two boxes, two big, two big,

giant, giant cardboard boxes with wooden floors, you know what I mean? Okay. And there would be a frame bolted to the blocks, board it to, bolted to the floor with the roll cage. And the bodies, it would already be tacked and hung on. You could get them tacked and hung on or you could have them the other way. It would come frame with the body tacked on it? Yeah. And you get, and then the other box was a block

and the rear end housing and all this stuff. And you get a book about this thick. And you started at the front, just like you would, a model car kit. And you went through it. And then when you got to the end, you called, there was a number, and you called Chrysler. Chrysler had a hotline you'd call,

and you'd call them and say, hey, I'm running caraway. What springs do I need? And they would tell you what leaf springs to put in the back and what torsion bars from their kids? calculations this is a good place to start and I think you got eight wheels and they would pay for the first two sets of tires that you got for it what you mean that that was it was a big deal it was a package it was a package deal man it was it was you in racing yeah this will put you in racing if you

put this thing together how long did they do that a couple of years couple years yeah yeah yeah and you know they sold a bunch of them through the midwest yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so you know they sold a bunch of them through the Midwest. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we shipped a ton of them out to Iowa and St. Louis. I think we shipped some to South America. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He had one. We had one that'll, um. You raced it a couple times. He raced, he did it. He did it. He did it. Jody really, Joe really kicked her butt down in Rome, Georgia one night with it.

I know there's a picture of you at Careway. Yeah. Racing the car. Pete raced it. You, you raced it and Pete raced it, I think, I think both of y'all raced. We got Joe Milliken.

Joe raced. Joe won some races with us for it. Really? Yeah. So. It was doing testing all the time. Right. Yeah.

Okay. Joe was a heck of a driver. Yeah. Yeah, he was. Yeah, he was. He started the same year. That was a great rookie year, man. That crop was.

79. That has a huge impact. Yeah. That's like you and Kenseth. I mean, there's been rookie classes. That's like him and, I mean, there's been, yeah, him and Pearson. Yeah.

There's been rookie classes that just had a, was like dropping a boulder into the water. You know what I mean? I had a huge ripple of it. And then there's rookie classes that just not. Nothing. Sorry. No, it's good. That was pretty interesting around doing that 79 project,

was learning about Joe and celebrating him because he was the, you know, when you looked at the rookie class at Daytona, of course we didn't know, we're looking at Harry Gant through the lens of what we know Harry Gann is today, right? He was just Harry Gant coming out of the short tracks back then, and he drove for like five different teams that year. but when you looked at the class, you didn't look at Joe and go,

oh, this is the threat. Yeah. And he ended up being, he led it most of the year, you know? Yeah. Ended up being the toughest competition for dad. And Joe worked for y'all for years and would take your charger,

like I guess your third and fourth charger, and run the sportsmen races at Daytona with it and stuff. Yep. You know, y'all sold a lot of equipment. Oh, yeah. He went a bunch of races. That's how you got new equipment. He ran a lot of y'all stuff, but you also sold to Buddy, Arrington.

Buddy. Buddy wound up, when we went really 78. Away from Christi. Went completely out of the crash of business. They wound up with everything in Martinsville. So he had cars, he had engines, rear end, springs. He ran that a while. We just cleaned house.

Really? Because when we went with GM, it's all four-core springs. Everything was completely, suspension was completely different. Why Buddy Errington? Well, Betty, Chief had built engines and stuff for him all along, and he was always a crash for a man. And so if we had an older car and he needed a car, we'd sell him a car, sell him a rear-in.

So we was his parts house. Okay. And then when we got out of business, He said, hey, you're going to have to get rid of that stuff. I'll just take it off. So he wound up with that. I think he wound up with the truck, the trailer. The whole work.

There wasn't a lot of Chrysler people. You had Buddy. You had Jabe. Gabe Thomas run that thing when he was running for a while. And then John Sears out of down there, he run that four car out of it. Yeah, Nogree was a crisis. Yeah, Nogre. Yeah.

We sold Jabe a car. And they were, NASCAR was just getting out of the dirt track business. So we didn't have a dirt track car. All our cars were asked by. So I sold Joe, the car. So we borrowed the car and go to Columbia,

South Carolina, win the race. And borrowed again. We go to, I guess, the very last race they run at Braille on dirt. We won the race there. You mean?

And what happened, we didn't pay them. What happened when we'd bring the car in, we could completely disassembled. Everything on the car was brand new. Brand new engine, brand new rear end, springs, whatever. So they wanted to give it back

to him. Hey man, for five or six races, he just changed oil in and go to the race. So he had a brand new car a couple times a year. So Wendell, a bunch of stuff too. Yeah, Wendell went up in a bunch of them. Wendell always, Wendell ended up with a bunch of stuff. He was always down there.

Yeah, he was always down there. And you got to, you got to remember, too, from Buddy, and Jabe and Wendell, we were the closest guys. Yeah. You know what I mean? I mean, they just come across. Yeah, they just come across the Virginia line and we're there, you know, in Greengeboro. What was that like for you to be, I mean, you know, you're at the racetrack and you're seeing these people,

but what was it like for you to come home from school and see competitors and other people just meandering about, right? It was always, listen, I loved race people. You know, I'm like you. I just loved. It must have been amazing. Yeah, it was because it was like, you see them at the racetrack, but here they are at your place. You know what I mean? Marcus drove out a little Honda down there and would pick up parts.

Marcus was another one that had the Dodgers and he'd come out of Asheville and he'd get stuff. But Wendell and Franklin would come down there and Buddy and Joey Arrington, they were always, they were down there all the time. Then you had Chubby Arrington and those guys, they were always down there. They were on Modified up in Virginia. So they would all come down there. It was always cool to see other people. I remember, and I've said this before, I remember when he switched to Ford and six.

69 and we went to, we rode over here to Charlotte and went to Home and the Moody's. And we walked in that place and I'm like, oh my gosh, man, even at nine years old, you're like, this place is freaking amazing. You know, we had this building and then added this building and then added this building. And then you go to Homer and Moody and they got European sports cars. They got Pearson's gold and blue number 17. You know, I mean, they got all this stuff, you know, and it's just like, I've never seen anything like that. So to go to another shop was a big deal.

Yeah. But to have people come to your shop was really cool as a kid. Yeah. Let me tell you one more thing. Joe Milliken, when I was in elementary school, he drove our school bus. He was my school bus forever. Yeah. We had the only.

That was his racing experience. Yeah, we had the only flat no bus. Remember, because we lived up there on that end of the county and they picked up more kids. So the biggest bus in the county was at our end and Joe drove the school bus. Is that how he was introduced to the family? No, no, no. They're all kin. They're all kind of halfway can.

Everybody's can in some way, shape, or form up there in level cross. That's wild. I've had this, kind of had this conversation with both of you at different times, but Kyle wants to race. You know, you've kind of kept him in check, and now here he comes to you, and he says, I want to do this. Well, what happened was he kept coming and wanted to race, and I said, no.

I was 21 for my dad and let me race. And Kyle turned 18. But what he'd done, he messed around and talked to some boys in the shop. I talked to Eddie in and we all helped me to work on this school. So I said, one day he come in and said, I want to do that. I said, go talk to your mother. If she okays it, you know, it would be all right. So I think he finally somehow, somehow, I know he convinced his mother's letting him drive.

Yeah, I promised her I'd go to night school, remember. Sounds like that mom was really the one. night school. I promised her I'd go to night school, remember. He promised to go to night school. That's why, so that's... Why night school? What was the old day school? No, no, no, because she wanted me to go to school, but I didn't want to go to school. Were you going to quit school?

I hadn't planned on Quinn school. I was going to night school. Was this like a bachelor's degree? Man, I never got that far. Let me just say it never got that far. You're out of high school. At high school. Right, this is going to furgue your education. So I'm going to Ashborough to a business college. Going to a business college at night school.

Yeah. Like do something, do something to school. Yeah, do something. And I'll do it. I'll help you. That's what I did. Same thing. Same thing.

If you'll go to school, you can do this. And this is what happened. And, you know, he'd work all day at the shop. Awesome. You know, he'd have pain on him or grease. Then he'd go to school. Well, after third or fourth time, then he went down there. The guy that was running the school call and said,

don't bring him back we'll give you your money back because he's going down there they smelled him I was a stinky kid I smelled like gas I smelled like lacquer thin I had Bondo I went down there one time I had Bondo dust you know how you when you're just white with Bondo dust

What were you going to school for just whatever? At that time I was My first couple classes were math and something else It was something It was some kind of business So it was just like I don't have to clean up to go

I just I'm getting there on time You know what I mean I get my homework I was doing my stuff, but I was a stinky kid. That didn't last long. No. Three or four days. Three or four days.

A couple weeks, two or three weeks. Yeah, that's two or three. And they gave my mom her, and she never said anything. No. I mean, she said, okay, just go try it. And I said, if I don't like it, if I don't like it, if I don't like it, then I'll go to school. So you promised her if I didn't like it. Did you drive, did you take this car and test?

Yeah, we went to Daytona. Yep. We went to Daytona. We went to Daytona. Kenny Roberts was there. Remember he was, they were tired testing motorcycles. He used to run their motorcycles. Yeah, they were tire testing motorcycle tires when we were there.

And did you take your car? No. We just took his call. Just one. Just his? You drove it. Yeah, he drove it. I went out and run it, you know, make sure everything was working good.

Put him in the car. Said, okay, this is where you're supposed to be, you know, big bump coming off of four at that time. You drove around the racetrack with him riding in? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How fast. $193. Bull, no, seriously.

I got in. We run a hundred. We run a hundred and nine. We run a hundred. 93 with him driving. Hey, what did we run with Terry down there? With my brother-in-law. Run 196.

Run 196. My brother-law on the right side of the car a few years later. Just sitting and holding on. I was on a car cover. Right. You'd strap yourself to nothing? I was strapped in. He was strapped in.

Listen, I just wanted to drive, dude. I know that. I know this happened. I know it really did happen. Yeah. And I mean, this is one of those things kind of like with the kids. I would get in the car today and I'm like, buckle, buckle, buckle, buckle. Tight, tight, tight.

Is this a shit tight? And Amy's like, is this necessary? I'm like, hell yeah. Yeah. You know, I've been in a few wrecks. But, boy, I was laying down sleeping in the back of my mom's Monte Carlo riding around when I was six years old. That's right.

Same thing. No seat bells all. So we jumped in. I jumped in the right side. Put the car cover in, jumped in the right side. He got in, bolted in. We went out and run, like he said. The whole time he's driving, he's pointing and saying there's a bump.

Used to be a bump here, but they just repaved. You remember? And they'd just repaved it. Used to be a big bump here. It's not as bad now. It's more of a swell, and he'd talk about all this stuff. Was there, all right. Now, no shit.

Like, I can imagine you're, of course you're going to get in the car with your dad, go do this. Yeah. And I get that. But can you admit, in the back of your mind, there was some fear? So I'll say this. With him? No. Really?

No. Because, man, I don't you think about this. And you would have been the same way. You've seen him do it so many times. There is no fear. I still would, the experience alone is scary, regardless of who's driving. Listen, after 18 years, I was here and he was here. I was this freaking close.

You know what I mean? I was this freaking close to sitting right there. So it's like I'm not. This is what it takes. Yeah, it was good. And it was good. The scary part was, not the scary part, the apprehension of going out by your was the deal.

Yeah. You know, and what's this thing on do? Now that I'm hanging on to it, yeah. It's like having your flight. He never been around a race show. Yeah. It's like, it's like having your flight. Richard didn't climb on the car cover and ride in the pastur seat.

No, no, he wasn't going out with me. He wasn't going out. But I mean, that was the apprehension, you know what I mean? Of, am I going to be able to turn this thing when I get it down there? What's it going to do, man? You know what I have no clue, dude? I mean, first time I barrel opened. You know what?

I don't know. I don't, it wasn't easy or hard, it was just so freaking different. Foreign. Than anything you have ever experienced. Never, never, never. I never drove off in the first corner at Carraway or anywhere, man. I never thought.

So you just, it was just so far out there you didn't think about it. How did you run that race and not crash into something? That's a good question. They were crashing out of my way. All right. As I would get to them, they would crash. You know what? I had no idea.

Yeah, me and every other driver is going to get into that situation and run into something. Yeah. Right. There's something we're going to do. So here's, you know, honestly, and I say this, there was Ron Hutchison, Dick's brother, Billy Hagan, Rezack, and Phil Finney. There's a guy named Phil Finney. His nephew was an official for a while. And Phil had the best car.

He had the best car. They had a something happened, or windshield caved in, hit a seagull. I don't know. I don't know the whole story. I talked to Phil the other day. I saw him at Daytona. But he had the best car. But it came down to me and was it Rezac?

Or Reevac, whatever his name was. Bob Reevee? Yeah. So it came down to us at the end of the race. And, man, they were fast. Man, you got to go back and look at these luminas and how these things are, I mean, they're bad, but Batmobile looking things because you could run anything in Arca. Yeah.

You know what I mean? and, you know, and he, I ended up beating him back by... Did you pass on them? No, we were... You were just out for him? We were racing. Yeah. We'd race back and forth.

He had passed, we'd pass, we'd pass. But he was on the outside. We came across the line side by side. Horse shit. Yeah. Yeah, because you didn't just beat him. You know what I mean? I mean, you had to race for it.

So it was just... What, you're in this race when the car gets loose the first time, right? You don't want... Did any of that happen? Did you have? had these moments. It never got bad loose. Yeah.

It never got bad loose. They just done to race track. They just repaved it. It had a lot of grip. It did have good grip. That's right. It had good grip. It just repaved it and they had to come with a different tire.

You know what I mean? Because they had to come, because they were down there. So it had good grip and it wouldn't never get loose in the sense of what you think of a car or people think of a car getting loose today or what they would get loose. You know what I mean? Because that was a different deal. But it was. So it's fascinating.

Yeah. Yeah, it was you just, you know, the fascinating part was to understand to learn the closure rate. You know what I mean? To learn how fast you were catching some of these guys that were running 15 miles an hour slower. You know what I mean? And how the draft would just jingle up, man. I mean, because all of a sudden you're here and you come off and there's a couple of cars and it jingles up. And all of a sudden, you're in turn three and you're like, hell, I'm 10 mile an hour faster than I've ever gone in here.

How am I going to turn this thing now? You know what I mean? I mean, there were those little things. And that was the thing, we spent two or three days, we spent three days down there by yourself just running and running, that helped a ton.

Keep forgetting about it. Yeah, because we could, yeah, so we could, so we were just there because like I said, the only other person there was Kenny Roberts on a motorcycle. They go out and run, then they give the bow over to us, and then we go out and run and back and forth. So it's bizarre. It is a bizarre way to start.

I'm not going to say it's not. You win the race, you pull into victory lane, what do you remember about your thoughts as that all happened in front of you? You know, I don't know if I had any feelings or not. You know what I know. I qualified second. Okay. So before the race start, I said, okay, here's what we're going to do.

You've never been in a race. I want you sort of take off with them and then drop back and let them guys and watch and see how they drive. and all that's the third green flag. He'd come by leading a dang race. I mean, you know. He didn't pay any. No, I just ran up to the gears. From then on, there was no need to give any

any instructions, so we never paid the attention. But when the race was over and stuff, and actually, we was tickled death because we had to run that car the year before and finally had to quit running it because we couldn't win anything with it. And, but the car was really good. It was a good car.

It was good at Daytona. Yeah. But just, Getting out of the dealer, going up and seeing him and stuff. I don't know, I think he was thrilled more than I would. What I was thrilled about, he'd run the whole race and hadn't hit anybody. I think that's what I was looking for. When you got out of the car, who were you excited to see first?

Them, him and Mama. And what did you? And, and, see, they were all there. My grandma was there, and we're back to 75 years, you know what I mean? And, you know, I don't, I didn't expect to win a race. Sure. Yeah, you know, you, that's not a race. What do you think you said?

No idea. Damn. No idea. I was 18, man. Did you? I just tickled shitless to be in a race car. 10 minutes, five minutes later, 10 minutes later, standing there getting your picture with a trophy. Did you look at him and go?

No, couldn't believe it. Couldn't believe that had played out the way it played out. You know what I mean? I mean, you couldn't. And couldn't believe, so seven days later, he's standing in victory lane. You know what I mean? I mean, it's the same thing. You're in the tire guy.

I'm the tire guy that day. You know what I mean? So you're back to doing your job. You know what I mean? I remember. I was doing the research for the 79 stuff I was trying to do, and they interview you during the race, and you're like, I don't want to talk about that.

Yeah, that's right. We're here for something else right now. We're here for, it's another race. That's a week ago, man. That was last week, man. That's the only thing. He's like, I'm working on these tires. I'm working on tires.

I'm working on tires, dude. That's what you do. Because that's what it was, you know. And it was crazy. So this is a fascinating part, okay? So we talk about, to me, this is the fascinating part. So it's like we go to Daytona and you run a race and then they're like, let's run five cup races. Yeah.

I've run one race. Right. One race. Yeah. So then we go to Michigan, Atlanta, Talladega, Charlotte, Charlotte, and Ontario. So at the end of my first full season of driving, I had run basically six races and nothing smaller than a mile and a half. Right. You know what I mean?

I was a cup driver, baby. Now, thinking about those emotions of that first race, the win, and how you, the dynamic between father and son and shift to Adam, right, when he starts racing in Arka and he's going to go make his first cup start at Texas, right? Yeah. You are different as a dad in that moment versus him. Oh, yeah. Right? But is he now different? He's different.

He's went through this. He's different because it's his grandson. Right. I was. And I'm sure, I'm sure in some respects that I'm more, I would be closer to what your dad, it's like you watch your kids and you think, man, where'd they learn that? Yeah. How'd they learn to do that?

Right. Where'd that come from? You know what I mean? And it was the same way when I started driving, there was things that happened that I just felt like I already knew. because I've been going on the racetrack since I was six years old. I'd watch 10 million races. If there was anybody that could come into the Cup Series

and just jump right in. So I had just been everywhere. Listen, we were talking about it the other day. I saw Dan Gurney went at Riverside when I was a little boy, you know what I mean? Because we went out there with him when Dan was driving that 121 car. So it's like you just had so much in here

somehow it just came out through here. You know what I mean? And that's kind of through your hands. And that's kind of the way that Adam was, watching him. It was just like he had been around it so long and had gone during the summers with me and he and Austin, it just kind of came out.

But you look at it, but man, to run when he won that Arca race, that was a huge deal. In Charlene, Shirley. I tell people this, and to sidebar here, my two most favorite, my two greatest memories in this sport is him winning Daytona in 79

because we went down there in 79 and tried to test that other car and it didn't work and we put that Osmobile body on it. We come back and it was just me and Richie and Steve because we had run out of money and he wins that race and then Adam driving the Arica car. He crashed in practice

and we had to beat the rear fenders out and put another deck lid on it and all that stuff. You know what I mean? And we just beat it out there in the garage area, man, and then he goes out and wins the race and being a part of those two wins are my greatest wins right there. I was more exciting.

And with Adam winning Charlotte than I was for him winning his first race. I thought so. You know what I mean? And I was. Basically, basically I was closer to Adam and I ever was to call. Yeah. Because it was a different time. Because growing up and doing things, I was so busy.

I just letting him be his own man. You know what? And when Adam come along, I had a little more time to circulate around and plug into what he was doing. Yeah. So he'd go to ASA races with him and stuff like that. So it was a different relationship. Yeah.

Totally. That's really interesting. Yeah. So I know things worked out for you and all of that. Did you, do you and your dad over the last 40 years or whatever make up for those? Oh, yeah. Yeah. For that kind of, you know, that sort of disconnect.

So we're closer now. It would be right. Ever been. Yeah. I mean, him seeking out. Yeah. Him sort of taking you around. That was evident to me by you coming up to me and saying, hey, man, I want to bring down on the show.

I'm like, all right. Well, this is great. So I think, you know, I think, so I'm, and we've talked about this before, and I've talked about it with my sisters. And I'll say it here. There's a period of my life that I was Richard Petty's son. Okay. And then there was a period of my life that I worked for Richard Petty.

and then there was a period that I was teammates with Richard Petty and then there was a period that I went and drove somewhere else and I was a competitor. And then I gave that up and I came back and I was his business partner. We went in and had a team together, you know, in the early 2000s. And then when all that changed and went away, then I became his son again.

Damn. So it's a full, it's a circle. It's a full circle. So the respect and love that I'm, I have for him has only grown through all that. You know what I mean? Because you see it through so many different ways. And I will, and I think part of that is, and you can understand this, is because you

got two, you have two little girls now. And, but you, I will never get to experience that with Adam. And you'll never get to experience that with your dad, right? You know, and that's, and that's something that misses. That's a hole. And you can't feel that hole. You know what I mean? But you can dang sure try with other ways.

You know what I mean? And that's all we ask in life. It's just let's just keep trying. You know what I mean? And you know, he and I are closer now. We talk, I call him every night. We talk, he answers the home phone. He don't have a cell phone, but he answers the home phone.

And you can call him at 10.30. I'm like, what are you doing? Eaton. You call him at 5.30. What are you doing? Eaton. You know what I mean? And he's watching YouTube, NASCAR classics on YouTube.

You know what I mean? Watch on. Me too. We need to grab you and we'll go to the house one night. Let's watch some classics. And sit and watch some classics. Yeah. And to have him do the commentary.

I would love that. We were watching Darlington not long ago. And he's like, man, he's watching it and he's talking about it. He's like, I almost won this race. I think I'll cut a tire with four laps ago. Bigger than crap, a cut a tire with four laps ago. And I mean, it's like, just remember it. And it was like 61 or 62.

You know what I mean? I mean, it's like 50 years ago, 60 years ago, and he still remembered. So it was pretty cool. That sounds like me. That's what I do every, just about every night. You get on the couch with the iPad and watch NASCAR classics. That's it, man. They're good.

They are. They are good. Back in the 60s, 70s, 70s was really, really good. Yeah. You mean? If I could. They got good stuff there. If I could just snap my fingers and put myself in the garage area of any NASCAR race,

the era I would choose is probably 79, 79, 77, 76. Oh yeah, listen, right through there. That little chunk, man. Yeah, and I'm going to tell you, man, right through there, 74, 75, 76. That's what it was really competitive for sure. With him and then kale in that Osmobile. Because he had that little group that come through, and all the group that I came through, all them guys won 80 races.

Yeah, yeah. You go to a group now. That's crazy. For guys won 15 to 20 races, he's a winner. Yeah. Which he still is. Don't give me wrong. For sure.

But there is so much different. Yeah. So there's no way to compare what we did with what they're doing the day or what my dead done you know yeah yeah well man i know you guys got a hard out it is it is time for us to have to wrap up uh our conversation is as tough as that's gonna be i thought you just got started i know it we got 75 more years man i know i can do this every week with y'all um i just want to say man i um i appreciate you Kyle you're you're just getting to know you over those last several years working at NBC and stuff i've really enjoyed

that and and I appreciate who you are and I appreciate how how passionate you are about things. I appreciate what you're doing with your dad and you're putting a lot of effort, your own efforts behind celebrating the 75 years. And that's just a great thing to see. You're setting such a great example as a son and trying to carry, you know, trying to share with people and celebrate that name and history. So I appreciate that about you. The king, I mean, I I love the king. He is the man. We talked about the autograph sessions

and sitting out there and making sure everybody got an autograph after all the races back in the 70s and the 80s and you set the standard for all the drivers of how to be and how to act and how to engage in and outside the race car. Your value and the asset you are to this industry is immeasurable.

It really is. It's impossible for, people to understand and I think it's great for Kyle to be sharing with people your legacy. I just been here so long. I know, I know, but it's important. Yeah. You know, I knew it. I knew, I remember you being the standard in thinking, I got to do that because that's what he did. And I really didn't, you know, and I think that that's important for this generation to connect with that. that'll serve them well because you served my generation very well for the example you said.

I appreciate y'all coming today and sharing with us. So much fun talking about all those old stories. I know we could sit here another five, six hours and keep on dead. Still not catch you up. I appreciate you, man. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Thank you for having this, man.

Yes, sir. Kyle and Richard Petty on the Deljean or Downey. All right, man. That was an awesome conversation with Kyle and Richard Petty. left me this hat autographed by the king. I think any time you get this autograph here, you got you a cool little piece of memorabilia. I had sheets of notes for Kyle and Richard,

didn't even look at them. I knew last night when I was coming in here today that Kyle was going to go. You just asked the question and you're going to go somewhere for about 15 minutes. I don't know if y'all enjoyed all the story, but I sure did. And I like to know, you know, I'd love to be able to talk to them about the father-son dynamic.

And I've always been curious about that because, you know, Richard Petty's an icon, and we build him up to be this certain thing. And then we never think about what type of father he might have been. So it's interesting to ask them about what it must have been like to come home from school. with a bad grade or have some sort of discipline coming your way, what kind of, what would you expect from the king? I know dad was intimidating. He was scary.

So it was interesting to learn that. But then, you know, how we take that forward to Adam and watching Kyle through that process of Adam becoming this race car driver and getting to that first cup star to Texas and how in love with all of that Kyle was. Kyle was right there just beaming. And even Richard had a look upon him,

a glow, if you will, during that process that wasn't really there with Kyle. So I don't know, man, that's pretty cool to be able to talk to those guys about these kind of personal things. they always get asked about racing and racing and racing. And so it's kind of fun to talk to them. I'd always seen that Lee Petty car that mangled up, balled up piece of metal

that flipped down the banking at Daytona back in 61. I see that at the museum. You can look at Google a picture of it online right now and see what this car looks like today. And I'd always been like, oh, that's such a cool piece of memorabilia. That's such a cool thing that still exists. I can't believe that's still around, right? But maybe they don't think it's that cool

because it was a dark day, right? Anyhow, it's fun to talk to them about that and all the other things and really enjoy that. I swear you could bring Kyle and Richard in here multiple times throughout the year and have really great shows. So thank you. I want to thank Ally for bringing us the guest segment

I talked about it with Kyle. He's became a friend. You know, I knew Kyle forever, right? But I don't know that I could call him a friend up until we started working together at NBC and just getting to know really who he is, the person he is, has been so fun for me.

And so thank you, Ally, for bringing in these allies into the room. No matter what you're saving for, if it's tickets to the next race, a new car, a new home ally, is going to serve you right. We're all better off with an ally. So thank you.

It's time for the white flag. All right, so we covered it yesterday, but just in case you haven't heard that episode, on Monday, the teardown dropped with Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi. Jeff Gluck goes on a terrific rant about his frustrations over what he saw this past weekend at Marnsville. He feels bad about it. Maybe go, give him a little hug, pat him on the back. Watch the rant.

Tell him what you think. Action is detrimental with Denny Hamlin. Also, Denny's take on short track racing, the state of the sport and so forth. Some critical, even though Denny's wild man and can get pretty animated, there's some good information coming from Denny. There's a lot of narratives around how to fix the short track package, and I think everybody's got a little hint of an answer in their comments as does Denny doorbub or clear.

Those guys hammer it every week. The spotters go after a lot of topics going on in the sport. And always kind of a fun, fun listen. A lot of good information in there too, but they're always giving each other a hard time. It's always fun to drop in and be a part of that show. Yesterday, our dirty air show that's out now. We had fun.

We had William Byron calling in the winner of the race. Sammy Smith here with a sundrop announcement. And we gave our opinion about what we saw this past weekend at Martinsville. Speed Street with Conner Daily drops today with Chase Holden. And there's a lot of things going on in the Incar world and Conner's world, as a matter of fact. So you want to get updated on everything happening there. And dropping Friday, you usually get Dirty Mode do on Thursdays. This week it's Friday.

Steve with Tart's busy on Thursday. Dude has a life. Unfortunately, Dirtymo Doe will have to wait a day. But he's going to give you his preview of Texas. So that'll be pretty fun. And also the Masters, big golf tournament that Steve is in love with. Got to hear what he's got to say about what he thinks is going to go on down at the Masters. DJD Reloaded.

Comes out every Thursday. Carla and my sister had a stacked lineup of drivers on the show last. Last week, Mark Martin, Michael Walter, Boston-centric, they all talked about their first starts in NASCAR. It's a great show. Every week, this show has had tons of variety. Carl has done an amazing job taking ownership of this show. And I really enjoy not only listen to the full DJD reloaded,

but the clips you guys are pushing out here at Dirtymoot Media. It's a fun show to listen to. So that's what we got going on this week. And looking forward to the race weekend. I'm going to Jacksonville, North Carolina, to race the cars toward Late Mall Stocks. That's going to be a tall order, but I am really looking forward to it.

We'll see. Check out Dirty Mo Media on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.